You Want Courtesy And Respect From The Cops, How About Giving Courtesy And Respect?

Within the Serengeti of chaos that the Jamaican culture has devolved, is still the incessant chatter about Police customer service, or to put it more succinctly the lack thereof.
Built into that nonsense notion is a belief that despite coming from a corrupt, aggressive and disrespectful population and despite forced to deal with the worse of the worse, officers must be the equivalent of saints while citizens bear no burden to be respectful.

The inference inherent in the constant gnashing of teeth is still a confounding and retarded one-sided expectation that crass disrespectful behavior must be rewarded with courtesy as long as the disrespect and crassness are directed at police officers.

On the one hand, there are those from the self-styled “upper crust” who believe that laws do not apply to them. They have no respect for the laws and by extension, they have no regard for those who enforce the laws.

Then there is the other subsection or the supposed “lower tier” which believes that violence and disrespect should be directed at officers and officers should retreat from their aggressive behavior.
Insofar as policing is concerned since it’s inception, to present day and going far into the future that is a dangerous position to take.
Officers have every expectation that they should go home after the end of their shift, they have no responsibility to absorb verbal or physical abuse for doing their job.

Having a courteous society is and should be in the interest of all Jamaicans, nevertheless, it is incomprehensible that the entirety of boorish behavior would be laid at the feet of the police when Politicians, judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and operatives from every stratum of the society demonstrate the same gutter behavior.

The Police which has earned more than it’s fair share of demerits continue to be the scapegoats of every talking head regardless of the issue under discussion.
The real question is how do we extract from a dirty pool, clean water without the process of filtration and constant purification?
And if we place the purified water back into the same dirty pool doesn’t that once purified water return to its former state of impurity?

The unmistakable fact is that rude behavior should not be tolerated from any individual which deals with the public.
With that said members of the public have a responsibility to conduct themselves with the greatest courtesy and respect when dealing with service providers.
It is a two-way street.

Maybe Jamaicans need to understand that no one cares about their conversations when they barge into spaces public and private talking at the top of their voices on cell phones.
How about speaking softly while on the phone, how about hanging up the phone when you enter a place of business?
How about joining the line at the back? How about waiting to board the bus and if it’s full await the next bus? How about not yelling over those standing in line?
How about giving some of that which you crave?

You know you want respect, how about giving respect and acting respectfully?
The average Jamaican is overly opinionated and underinformed.
Those who consider themselves from the upper-crust complain that offenses are being committed in front of officers and they do nothing about it.
Realistically when officers act with courtesy they are ignored and physically assaulted.(social media platforms are filled with instances of such assaults, which only happen to Jamaican cops ).

When they do act with force in order to gain compliance they are castigated as brutish violent, aggressive and abusive.
It’s a no-win situation in which the police is damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
What the Albert Einsteins in the society fail to understand is that respect is a two-way street in which you get as much as you give.

Unfortunately for Jamaican officers who strive to do the right thing in upholding their oaths even some who served in this cesspool of criminal acquiescence are now skeptics.
Well over a quarter century ago being a young beat cop in South parade, West Street, Heywood streets required grit and determination.
Every arrest had to be made with force, today the level of hostility and disrespect meted out to officers is vastly and exponentially, multiplied.

There is no shortage of village lawyers who have opinions on what police should have done in the heat of the moment, to those opinionated know-nothings I ask where have you served your country, what would you have done as an officer faced with any of the scenarios in the posted videos?

Jamaicans have a choice to make if they want to return the country to any modicum of civility.
Stop looking at the other person to be civil and courteous. You be courteous and civil and maybe, just like a pebble in a brook, there will be a ripple effect.
Just maybe the courtesy and civility you give to that officer on the street or on the phone will be reciprocated. You are the change you seek instead of looking to others to give you what you crave.

The change you seek begins with you. Police work is dirty, it’s sometimes ugly and yes sometimes cops step out of line, there should be no tolerance for that but they need all the support they can get to do a thankless shitty job that many who criticize them would not and cannot do.
Let’s stop the criticizing and give them the support they need as they place their lives on the line to protect your miserable hide.